Netbackup restoration

Hi,

Basically, we have 2 totally separate independent windows domain/forest environment.Each domain environment has its own Windows Netbackup v5.0 MP2 master server and tape library which are identical.My question is about the feasibility for restoring files using media(s) which are used / backed up by first Netbackup master server onto second Netbackup master server in the other environment. If this is possible, as far as I know the steps might only involve :

1. Take out the media (s) including catalog media from the original master server library .
2. Put the media (s) above into the other library on the other environment.
3. Initiate 'import catalog'on the destination master server
4. Follow thru backup, archive, and restore process

I understand for normal restoration on the same master sever, it is possible to do restore files on different host than the host where the files are backed up from, but whether it is possible to do that in this situation (doing the restoration on totally different hostname and environment).

Who is Participating?

You don't need to use a catalog backup to do this. You only need the tape that the backup went to from Domain number 1. Take this backup tape and then import the contents of the tape into your NetBackup on the second domain.

To do this, follow these directions...

Put the tape into the library. Inventory your library so Netbackup knows the tape is in it's library

.

Go to the "Catalog" section in your NetBackup GUI. Right-click the right side of the screen and select "Initiate Import"

Choose the media server to do the import, select "tape" and type in the media ID. Click OK

At the bottom of the same screen, you will see 2 tabs. Click on the "results" tab. You can see the real-time import of the images on the tape. All NetBackup is doing at this point is reading the headers from the backup images to see what is on the tape. Once this is done, you have to do a "Phase 2 Import" to get the actual information into the NetBackup database

Once the "Phase 1" part of the import is complete, click back on the "Search" tab at the bottom of the screen.

From the "Action" drop-down list, choose "Import"

Perform a search for the images that Netbackup just read off the tape

From the results of the search, select the images you want to import into NetBackup, right-click, and select "Import".

Symantec call this a "2 phase import" but this SHOULD actually be a "3 phase import". Once the import has gone through the second phase of the import and the backup images are in the catalog, you may have to reset the expiration date on the backup images. Do this with the "bpexpdate" command (look it up in your NetBackup Commands Guide)

As far as I know in DOMAIN/FOREST environment restoration to different hostname/domain/forest would be possible only for MEMBER servers, but not for DCs.

Oh, wait...I read your question once again...
You are asking, if you can restore files from domain1/forest1 onto domain2/forest2? I am not sure...if I think how it works, tape cannot store SID information of NTFS auth, which means, authentication is stored in database and permissions for access to files are restricted within backup software. Which means, if you can import catalog into another domain, and read files, you can also restore files to any domain or environment. But question is how NetBackup would handle imported catalogs...
Hmmm...not looking good:http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH72098

Actually in short what we are aiming is to restore just normal flat files on member server in one domain to be restored on member server in other domain. If possible I wouldn't create the catalog media duplication but instead using the original catalog media and put it in onto the destination master server.

I've heard it is possible another product which is run on unix environment to restore a media which is backed up from another backup server, so I'm just wondering netbackup also should be able to deal with this situation for disaster recovery scenario ?

Indeed if we think about the Security related entities (SID, authentication, etc), also wondering how it could handle this requirement.

But I'm still pretty sure this is a common scenario and requirement for real disaster recovery in which any data protection and management product should already have certain features in it.

So if someone maybe with have similar experiences could share some information maybe.